18 November 2008
Maputo — As of late Tuesday afternoon, Mozambique's main election observation body, the Electoral Observatory, had secured accreditation for 1,050 observers for Wednesday's municipal elections - but was still running into problems in the most sensitive province, Sofala.
The Electoral Observatory is a coalition of religious organisations and NGOs. It represents the three most important religious bodies in the country - the Christian Council (which includes the mainstream protestant churches), the Catholic Bishops' Conference, and the Islamic Council. The NGOs in the Observatory include the Human Rights League (LDH), the Organisation for Conflict Resolution (OREC), and the Mozambican Association for the Development of Democracy (AMODE).
The Observatory's spokesperson, Sheik Abdul Carimo, told AIM that 650 of the observers will be stationed in the 13 municipalities where the Observatory intends to do a full parallel count.
This is possible, because the initial count is done at the polling stations, and the results sheets are the posted on the polling station walls. With sufficient observers it is possible to collect the results from all polling stations in a given municipality. Such parallel counts are a useful check against any attempted fraud in the later stages of vote tabulation.
The other 400 observers, Carimo said, would be distributed among the remaining 30 municipalities, where the Observatory will not attempt a complete count.
But as afternoon drew to a close, there were still 15 observers who had not been accredited in Sofala. Sofala includes the city of Beira, which has seen the most dramatic contest of these elections - a three cornered battle between the current mayor Daviz Simango, who has been expelled from the former rebel movement Renamo, and is running as an independent, the official Renamo candidate Manuel Pereira, and the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party. Lourenco Bulha.
Since the Simango camp is already alleging that fraud is being prepared, it would clearly be useful to have a large number of observers at the Beira polling stations.
Carimo said the Sofala Provincial Elections Commission (CPE) has shown an "excess of zeal" in failing to grant accreditation for the final 15 observers. The CPE had claimed that the deadline for accreditation had passed - although the rules on observation do not specify such a deadline.
Several of the observers found that the CPE was questioning their identity. They did not possess an identity card - because, like literally hundreds of thousands of other Mozambicans, they had applied for a new identity card, but it has not yet been issued, thanks to the huge backlog in applications. All they had was the receipt showing that they have applied for identity cards, and the CPE was reluctant to accept this.
Carimo thought the Provincial Elections Commissions were not clear about the role of observers, and the instructions received from Maputo had not been fully understood.
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